This, in turn, can create a general culture at a school which assumes different rigid traits about learners purely based on their learning group. Overall, the report suggests that ability groups may be inhibiting low-attaining students' future learning progress. Several teachers reported that with dependent learners comes a greater need to develop a strong relationship with students. While such an emphasis on strong teacher-student relationships may mean that peer support activities may be being disregarded, the authors believe the peer support approach could actually aid in encouraging lower-ability students' independence from teachers.
Mazenod, A. Nurturing learning or encouraging dependency? Teacher constructions of students in lower attainment groups in English secondary schools. Cambridge Journal of Education , Do you teach using ability grouping? In your own school context, what are the positives and negatives of this teaching method? For ability groupings to be useful they need to do the following things: be flexible, avoid labels, and vary between subjects and topics.
When I was in middle school, students were grouped into two teams: the stars and the comets. These labels stuck with those students, impacting their motivation, and creating a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. First, it was extremely rigid. Students were not able to move between groups at all. Second, the grouping inadvertently created labels for the students in them. Finally, students were grouped for all subjects without regard to strengths or weaknesses.
At the beginning of year 7, pupils in the lowest sets for maths and English have lower self-confidence in those two subjects than their peers in higher sets — but they also have lower general self-confidence. Moreover, we have found evidence of a widening self-confidence gap between pupils in the highest and lowest sets, from the beginning of year 7 to the end of year 8. All this calls into question the widespread faith placed by schools in attainment grouping.
Our research found that only four per cent of schools use completely mixed-attainment grouping for maths in year 8. Moreover, PISA findings show that all participating schools used attainment grouping for at least one subject, and research conducted for the DfE found that one-third of schools used setting or streaming as a strategy to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.
But would a move to mixed-attainment grouping be the answer? The district has used ability grouping since , when it was forced to dismantle its segregated system. In , an African American parent filed suit, claiming that the district's ability grouping and placement practices violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.
Gluckman, Principal, September Trending Report Card Comments It's report card time and you face the prospect of writing constructive, insightful, and original comments on a couple dozen report cards or more.
Here are positive report card comments for you to use and adapt! Struggling Students? You've reached the end of another grading period, and what could be more daunting than the task of composing insightful, original, and unique comments about every child in your class? The following positive statements will help you tailor your comments to specific children and highlight their strengths. You can also use our statements to indicate a need for improvement.
Turn the words around a bit, and you will transform each into a goal for a child to work toward. Sam cooperates consistently with others becomes Sam needs to cooperate more consistently with others, and Sally uses vivid language in writing may instead read With practice, Sally will learn to use vivid language in her writing.
Make Jan seeks new challenges into a request for parental support by changing it to read Please encourage Jan to seek new challenges. Whether you are tweaking statements from this page or creating original ones, check out our Report Card Thesaurus [see bottom of the page] that contains a list of appropriate adjectives and adverbs. There you will find the right words to keep your comments fresh and accurate.
We have organized our report card comments by category. Read the entire list or click one of the category links below to jump to that list. Behavior The student: cooperates consistently with the teacher and other students. Character The student: shows respect for teachers and peers. Group Work The student: offers constructive suggestions to peers to enhance their work.
Interests and Talents The student: has a well-developed sense of humor. Participation The student: listens attentively to the responses of others. Social Skills The student: makes friends quickly in the classroom. Time Management The student: tackles classroom assignments, tasks, and group work in an organized manner. Work Habits The student: is a conscientious, hard-working student.
Student Certificates! Recognize positive attitudes and achievements with personalized student award certificates! Report Card Thesaurus Looking for some great adverbs and adjectives to bring to life the comments that you put on report cards?
Go beyond the stale and repetitive With this list, your notes will always be creative and unique. Adjectives attentive, capable, careful, cheerful, confident, cooperative, courteous, creative, dynamic, eager, energetic, generous, hard-working, helpful, honest, imaginative, independent, industrious, motivated, organized, outgoing, pleasant, polite, resourceful, sincere, unique Adverbs always, commonly, consistently, daily, frequently, monthly, never, occasionally, often, rarely, regularly, typically, usually, weekly.
Objectives Students will learn about changes that occurred in the New World and Old World as a result of early exploration. Older students only. Besides strange people and animals, they were exposed to many foods that were unknown in the Old World. In this lesson, you might post an outline map of the continents on a bulletin board.
On the bulletin board, draw an arrow from the New World the Americas to the Old World Europe, Asia, Africa and post around it drawings or images from magazines or clip art of products discovered in the New World and taken back to the Old World.
You might draw a second arrow on the board -- from the Old World to the New World -- and post appropriate drawings or images around it. Adapt the Lesson for Younger Students Younger students will not have the ability to research foods that originated in the New and Old World.
You might adapt the lesson by sharing some of the food items in the Food Lists section below. Have students collect or draw pictures of those items for the bulletin board display. Students might find many of those and add them to the bulletin board display. Notice that some items appear on both lists -- beans, for example. There are many varieties of beans, some with New World origins and others with their origins in the Old World.
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